The Limits of Control 2009

Dan Zak, Washington Post: Jarmusch has taken the idea of a caper, drained it of plot, action and suspense, and set it against an absurdist background, where every symbol, person and incident should convey meaning but doesn't. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: It's unfair to call Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control the emptiest movie ever made, but I wrote that in my notebook as I struggled to stay awake. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The movie's main pleasure lies in the early scenes, which mix the filmmaker's familiar deadpan humor with an Antonioni-like sense of arid emptiness and conundrum. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Jim Jarmusch's Dada meander, shot by Christopher Doyle, is empty and excruciating -- that's really all you need to know. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: It will frustrate many viewers, and it often frustrated me, but there's something about it that keeps your gaze, despite the self-indulgence of much of the filmmaking. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Too much of The Limits Of Control feels canned and airless, so stifled by Jarmusch's obsessions that it loses all sense of surprise. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: With The Limits of Control, [Jim Jarmusch] has come up with a dud. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: Instead the film is like a series of sun-saturated French impressionist paintings, so beautifully is it shot by cinematographer Christopher Doyle and so soft-focus is its narrative. Read more

Mick LaSalle, Houston Chronicle: The Limits of Control contains all the wonderful things that only Jim Jarmusch can do but lacks some of the necessary things that Jarmusch either can't or won't do. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The eerie displacement of being at large in alien territory is the guiding emotion in Jarmusch's movies, and in none more so than this one. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Let its craft wash over you. Go with its flow. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The Limits of Control, even with its flow of star cameos (Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal, a frenetic Bill Murray), is a listless long pause that rarely refreshes. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: This indulgent exercise in audience torture deliberately avoids every beat of an espionage thriller. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: For all its cinematic references, [the movie] seems impatient with the need to tell a narrative at all, as if its secret wish were to be a photography exhibit, or an album of half-connected songs. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The Limits of Control feels like a dream I had after a slightly off paella and way too much bad wine. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: This is one of those movies that's too cool to have a plot. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: This is an empty, boring sedative by Jim Jarmusch, a writer-director with not enough talent to be either. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: This is indulgent filmmaking at its most pretentious. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: For the impatient viewer, Jarmusch's pulpy, poetic exercise will probably feel hopelessly, unintentionally parodic, prompting disdain and derision. Consider yourself warned -- not everyone's going to go for this business. But I did. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: For those who prefer substance over style, The Limits of Control has little to offer beyond the tedium of a half-baked storyline with undeveloped characters. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: [Jarmusch] is making some kind of a point. I think the point is that if you strip a story down to its bare essentials, you will have very little left. I wonder how he pitched this idea to his investors. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: With The Limits of Control, Jim Jarmsuch gets tangled up in his own deadpan. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: This interminable trifle from indie icon Jim Jarmusch aims to be the last word in ironic cool, but it comes across as the work of a fatigued dilettante. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The film may be ahead of its time -- or it may just be an elaborate put-on. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: What a drag it is to descend from coolly blank to boringly meaningful. Read more

Greg Quill, Toronto Star: Distracted by the minutiae of the rituals he has constructed, Jarmusch seems unconcerned about making a point, or even constructing a coherent story. Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, Time Out: Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Jim Jarmusch's latest - his best since Dead Man (1995) - practically begs for dissection and analysis, but it's better, perhaps, to read the film's many repeated symbols, sayings and actions as mood enhancers rather than intellect stimulators Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: A work of dazzling formal discipline that riffs on the simple notion of repetition and variation. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: For those who expect a coherent narrative that moves at a reasonable pace, director Jim Jarmusch's latest movie is likely to confound and annoy. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: It just feels tired and recycled -- the referencing of Rimbaud and Blake, the flagrant hipsterism that here falsifies rather than refreshes...the above-it-all attitude toward connecting on a human level. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The Limits of Control is a shaggy dog story, but it's leaner and less precious (and more beautiful) than the past few Jarmusch films. Read more